Smartphones’ GPS systems are going to start getting a lot more accurate. According to IEEE Spectrum, Broadcom is starting to make a mass-market GPS chip that can pinpoint a device’s accurac

Jed Fisher's insight:

Great news for GPS but even better news for Augmented Reality. Having this allows us to walk around a construction site (and the like) and "see through walls" (seeing pipes/electricals/etc) of building that are work-in-progress and the like. When you know the person's exact location we can drive down the augmented building and graphics based on the users GPS location. Super excited about this!

Magic Leap, the mysterious AR startup with a multiple-billion dollar valuation, still doesn’t have a headset to show the world, but in a recent paper published by Magic Leap researchers entitled Toward Geometric Deep SLAM, we get a peek into a novel machine vision technique that aims to bring the company closer to their goal of creating a …

Jed Fisher's insight:

Two predictions from me today :-)

1) My wish (and slight prediction (although i'm sure others are saying the same thing)) for today's Apple event is that the iPhoneX has a 3D camera which works like Google Tango. This combined with Apple's ARKit will allows for much much much better AR. Plus, indirectly, it allows for a host of new algorithms to be developed for things like "Deep SLAM" tracking. Regardless, tracking using the phone will soon reach the Hololens type level (pretty darn good). This then really does take AR prime time.

Now, if/when we have this. I'm really starting to feel that Magic Leap may end up being too late to the party... We've already got mixed reality headsets like Hololens, Meta, and soon others. The tracking of these is pretty good and getting better and better. Soon more phones will have similar level tracking with 3D cameras. What can Magic Leap still do that hasnt been done? Better tracking and automatic identification? (maybe), better hardware headset (maybe).

My second, "big" prediction for Magic Leap is it will do social augmented gaming (locational based) really well. for example - play tag (tip) (chasings) together (wearing headsets) with an augmented character in your real environment - things like this. This would be very cool.

AMD has announced its free ray-tracing engine ProRender will run within Blender, as well as Maya, 3ds Max, and SolidWorks. AMD says ProRender uses a physically-based workflow, which allows multiple materials to be expressed in a single, lighting-independent shader, making it easy to color objects and have them usable in any sensible environment.

Jed Fisher's insight:

Exciting to be in the theatre when AMD announced this at Siggraph. We've seen first hand the power and visual quality of Radeon ProRender and with plugins to SOLIDWORKS, Blender, Maya, and 3ds Max it is likely to make this a good choice for those seeking a new physical raytracing renderer. Great writeup and summary as always by GFXSpeak.

Apple announced a new development platform , dubbed ARKit, that will let developers create AR experiences on the iPhone and iPad. ARKit will be incorporated deep into iOS 11 that will give help Apple to create the "largest AR platform in the world"

Jed Fisher's insight:

What an awesome month for AR - first Facebook's big announcements for AR and VR and now Apple's!

Apple we knew was working on AR (after they acquired Metaio) and all of Tim Cook's comments and the implications that glasses might be even coming. But we were not expecting to see an ARKit so soon!

- there’s Visual Inertial Odometry, which will let ARKit track the world, and for this it will fuse camera sensor data with CoreMotion data <Jed's comment - this totally makes sense and should also help finally make perfect 360 stitching>

- and then there is the “Scene Understanding and Lighting Estimation”, which Apple says will let the ARKit analyse the scene based on the camera view, and then find “horizontal planes like tables and floors, and can track and place objects on smaller feature points as well.”

<Jed's comment - faaaaaaawwwwkkkk me :-) super happy about this and what a nice surprise. This is going to serious help improve AR experiences for just about everyone who wants AR>

Yup, it's been a good month for Augmented Reality! (and all of those with Apple devices!)

We are going to hold a special talk by Jed Fisher who has done a lot of real-world AR/VR projects. Here is a bit of his Bio:
Jed is a cofounder and Managing Partner of 4D Pipeline, a digital product design and strategy firm which helps startups and global 100's make great products people love. Specializing in Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, we...

You might have seen the very cool simulation of Portal in Hololens recently. White it demonstrated the ways in which Microsoft’s augmented reality device could replicate the video game’s mechanic of launching objects through portals, it didn’t allow the user to walk through the portals themselves. “HoleLenz Gate” does exactly that and it’s bad for people who are afraid of heights.

Developer Kei Voxel has been tinkering with this impressive experiment for a while now. You can see a compilation of his progress in the video below. But be warned, that it might cause a sinking feeling in your stomach. The holes in the floor certainly appear dangerous but when the user walks through the portal into a whole other location overlooking a mountain range, it becomes clear that this is some next level tech.

Jed Fisher's insight:

Very trippy, very clever, and i'm guessing very "magic leap" like. Nice to see people showing this stuff off in Hololens!

Virtual reality and augmented reality headsets can offer mind-blowing digital experiences, but they are, by design, singular experiences. Trying to describe it to someone without a headset

Jed Fisher's insight:

For me putting on a Microsoft Hololens and seeing my first (good) Hololens demo was a "wow" experience. I've been doing VR/3D/AR for a long long time but Hololens really jumped out as special. Since then we've (4D Pipeline) have developed a number of products for Hololens for Automotive, CAD, Manufacturing and others. Some of these developments have been really amazing (if i say so myself) in terms of doing something that just was not possible to do before.

One of the troubles with Hololens is it's so hard to explain and sell (until someone puts them on and tries them out). Looks like i'm not alone in this - Microsoft too has this challenge.

BGR describes how Apple may incorporate augmented reality with their next smartphone in 2017.

“The way Apple envisions implementing augmented reality into the iPhone is multi-faceted. For instance, Apple envisions iPhone users being able to point their cameras at any number of objects and have the device itself recognize what’s in frame,” says columnist Yoni Heisler.

The article adds that as another example, Apple could build functionality that would allow the iPhone camera to completely manipulate faces. This has caused a lot of excitement in the smartphone world.

Jed Fisher's insight:

So a little while back Apple bought Munich based Augmented Reality Metaio. This is a company i knew fairly well and i must admit i did not see it coming at all! Reason, at the time Metaio was the provider of an AR solution (one of the better ones) which used SLAM for markerless AR technology. It was pretty good but still i wouldnt hav thought this would be enough to be bought by Apple. However what they also had was hardware solution and patents to do AR computer vision as fast as possible (with i suspect lower power requirements) on mobiles. Anyway with this, these two things now in retrospect make a whole lot of sense for Apple (and Samsung, Google, Microsoft, and others) who now are looking at new game changes to win the mobile war.

Tim Cook has talked about how AR will be a game changer, eg "Augmented reality will be an essential part of your daily life, like the iPhone", and "A significant portion of the population... will have AR experiences every day, almost like eating three meals a day."

So now there are many rumors flying about to how it might work. Will we see a "transparent" phone that you can plug into a headset (or not)? will it detect faces? detect flat objects like tables, walls, etc; detect complex shapes? detect markets. Time will tell but it's exciting. If 2016 was the year of VR, then as Tim Cook also says augmented reality will be bigger than virtual reality, so maybe we will see this in 2017!

AWE, the world's largest AR+VR conference and expo, returns to Europe October 19-20, 2017 in its second year for AWE Europe. This year AWE EU is hosted at the MOC in Munich, Germany.

Join 1,500 professionals including a mix of CEOs, CTOs, designers, developers, producers, engineers, futurists, analysts, investors, and top press in a fantastic opportunity coming together to learn, inspire, partner, and experience first hand the most exciting industry of our times.

Jed Fisher's insight:

Ping me to arrange a meetup with 4D Pipeline and find out why the best of the best choose to work with us. Also ping me for a special (limited) 45% discount!!

There aren't many big players in AR right now, but Meta can count itself as one of them. It has the technology. It has the growing developer community.…

Jed Fisher's insight:

Here at 4D Pipeline we've been doing loads of HoloLens experiences and have accomplished some amazing things. That said, I've been really impressed with the Meta tech and am looking forward to doing more with it.

Here at 4D Pipeline we've been doing loads of HoloLens experiences and have accomplished some amazing things. That said, I've been really impressed with the Meta tech and am looking forward to doing more with it.

Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) have released the MaterialX Library for computer graphics. MaterialX is an open standard developed by Lucasfilm’s Advanced Development Group and ILM engineers to improve the transfer of rich materials and look-development content between applications and renderers.

Jed Fisher's insight:

This is pretty major really. The world of 3D graphics and downstream 3D has suffered greatly from the lack of open materials and raytracing software. Recently AMD has announced Radeon ProRender raytracer (to be open sourced) and now Lucas and ILM have opened sourced their material standard, MaterialX.

Good days ahead for the exchange of realistic and non realistic materials and shaders!

Tech giants including Baidu and Google spent between $20B to $30B on AI in 2016, with 90% of this spent on R&D and deployment, and 10% on AI acquisitions. AI investment has turned into a race for patents and intellectual property (IP) among the world’s leading tech companies.

Last week at Facebook’s F8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg went all in on augmented reality (AR).

What’s (probably) in the box?

If we analyze for a moment what was introduced during the talk, the technologies that are inside this new platform are probably the following:

Cross platform monocular SLAM. This is what gives you the ability to walk around an object placed in the environment.

Monocular structure from motion. This builds a 3D representation locally of some portions of the real world inside the phone, allowing you to do things like occlusion (putting virtual things behind real things).

Robust loop closure. When Mark talked about “leaving notes” for others, robust loop closure is what you need to enable that. Effectively it lets the system “remember” where these notes are left simply by looking at the environment.

Object recognition. Understanding what objects are in the real world and then allowing you to give contextual data around them.

Authoring and development tool. This is the biggest piece of the puzzle and would potentially allow anyone to create AR experiences with a very low bar of entry.

For any group of developers, any one of these tasks is monumental but tractable with the right team, funding, and partnerships. But rolling out all of these tasks in a seamless package that can work at scale is nearly impossible.

Read more

Jed Fisher's insight:

This is pretty phenomenal, probably the biggest boost to AR since AR started. It's got SLAM and 3D effects, it's got a lot. It means marketing solutions are going to flock to this platform. Well done Facebook. Your move Apple!

Acer may be the first to start shipping an inexpensive, quality headset for Windows developers -- but this $300 device is no HoloLens.

Jed Fisher's insight:

Real shame they do not have a transparent visor but great they are all the same software. Microsoft has always been about building platforms so i'm glad to see they are opening this up. Looking forward to giving it a play shortly.

Microsoft is taking a rather unusual path with its HoloLens augmented reality (AR) headset. The corporation is reportedly skipping the second version of the product and jumping right into development of what was to be the third generation model. The latest and greatest and HoloLens is expected to be available for consumers in 2019....

Jed Fisher's insight:

I'm actually a big fan of this. I know everyone wants to see super crazy takeup and growth but this to me is a more sensible approach especially to a company like Microsoft that is not running on VC or investment dollars alone. They are working smart and making money and winning market share.

Microsoft was always good at v3.1's ;-)

At 4D Pipeline we are working on ground breaking projects using Hololens for our serious (non game) customers.

For the second year running 4D Pipeline partnered and worked on the well respected VRX VR event.

For both the US (San Fran) and London event we helped with the VR for Enterprise track with speakers, presentations, and panels.

Here is one of my favorite panels from the event (hosted by Tyler @4Dpipeline); I think it's worth a listen (if i say so myself!) as it brings good real insights from companies working in this space including IKEA, Lockheed Martin, Simplygon, and CHIL. Give it a lunchtime listen and please feel free to share any feedback you have. Also let me know if you'd be interested in being on such a panel in future.

Finally, ping me also if you'd like to take VR, AR, Mixed Reality, 3D, or Hololens, to your organization for real measurable results, as this is what we do at 4D Pipeline. Our Clients include, AUDI, BMW, VF, AMD, Intel, Dassault Systemes, Unity Technologies, and many others. jed (at) 4Dpipeline(dot)com

Microsoft today announced that it has acquired Simplygon, a company that develops 3D-optimization solutions for game developers and other industries that need..

Jed Fisher's insight:

HUGE Congratulations to our multiyear valued client Simplygon, and to Microsoft. Great to see this acquisition happen!!

At 4D Pipeline we help companies with Define, Design, Develop, and Deploy great products people love. It's our honor to have helped Simplygon with all these things and in particular with their product strategy.

This acquisition makes huge sense for Microsoft, the makers of the incredibly awesome Hololens which essentially requires Simplygon to take heavy 3D data (MCAD, ACAD, DCC) to it.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.